“Well,” Elise said, climbing to her feet and pulling Catriona up after her. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“Ready?” Jenna asked, laying a hand on Rose’s shoulder.
Rose took a deep breath. Oh God. She was really doing this. It was really happening.
“Ready.”
She’d asked Elise to give her away. Unconventional, maybe, but nobody in Dun Mallach had batted an eyelid. After all, shewasa MacFinnan spellweaver, and eccentricity went with the title. Elise gave her a wink and came to stand beside her. Jenna and Catriona took up their places behind, carrying bouquets, while Mable took hold of Patch.
The little dog had been put on a leash, and he wasnothappy about it. But the last thing Rose needed was him deciding now was a great time to play chase-the-hem while she was in her wedding dress. He pulled and yapped, excited at all the commotion.
“Patch, behave yerself!” Catriona scolded and, for a wonder, he calmed a little. Catriona bent and hung a wreath of flowers around his neck.
“Brides-dog indeed,” Rose said with a laugh.
They stepped out of the room and made their way through the corridors of the castle. As they walked, Rose thought of how strangethis had all seemed when she’d first come here. It had felt alien, far removed from everything she knew. But now, as her eyes skimmed across the tapestries on the walls, the beams across the ceilings, the plaid runners that covered the flagstones, it didn’t feel strange any more at all.
It felt like home.
They reached the doors to the great hall and paused. Drew was waiting there to announce them, and as she reached him, he turned and announced their arrival to the guests waiting within. Music sprang up from the quartet that Cailean had recruited, and Rose felt her heart skip a beat.
This was it. The moment she’d been dreaming of for the past few weeks as preparations were made. She could hardly believe it had finally arrived.
Stepping inside, she saw that the great hall was crowded with people, some of whom she recognized, some of whom she didn’t. Maggie and Beatrice were there, grinning like a couple of excited schoolgirls, along with Old Seamus, his daughter Brina, and a huge gaggle of grandchildren. Others she didn’t know, as many had come in from other islands to mark the wedding of the laird of Barra.
As she and Elise took the first step down the aisle, her gaze immediately sprang to Cailean. He was waiting for her in the place where the high table normally sat but which had now been cleared away and replaced by a woven arch covered in late-blooming flowers. His eyes found hers across the intervening distance, and her breath caught in her throat. Decked out in the MacNeil plaid, with his dark hair framing his face, he was enough to take her breath away.
She found herself grinning every bit as stupidly as Maggie and Beatrice had been, and he gave her an answering grin, boyish and full of joy.
“Who isthat?” Elise murmured as they began walking down the aisle.
Rose tore her gaze away from Cailean to see that Elise was eyeing the man standing at Cailean’s side. He was younger than Cailean with wavy blond hair so pale it was almost white. He wore clothes even finer than Cailean’s and had a bearing that spoke of easy confidence. She’d met the man yesterday, when he’d arrived from Islay to stand as Cailean’s best man.
“That’s Jamie Donald,” Rose said. “They call him the Lord of the Isles. He’s Cailean’s liege lord.”
“Is he now?” Elise said in a musing tone. “So what’s that? Some sort of king?”
“I don’t think it quite works like that. I think it’s more that he’s first among equals.”
Elise said nothing more, but Rose could see her glancing in Jamie Donald’s direction as they walked. Oh dear. She recognized that look in her sister’s eyes. The poor man didn’t know what he was in for.
But all such considerations were pushed from her mind as they reached the end of the aisle. Elise eyed Cailean as she held out Rose’s hand towards him.
“You take good care of her, you hear?”
Cailean’s eyes shone. “Oh, I will. On that ye have my word.”
Elise gave a tight nod and stepped back, shooting Jamie Donald a curious look as she went to stand next to him.
Cailean took Rose’s hand and squeezed. “Rose,” he breathed. “Ye look stunning.”
“You don’t scrub up too badly yourself,” she replied, squeezing his hand and giving him a smile. God, she couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
“Ready, love?”
“Ready.”
Together, they turned to face the person who was to marry them. This was to be a handfasting, a traditional Scottish wedding rather than a Christian one—to Beatrice’s disgust and Maggie’s delight. So rather than a priest, they had asked for the most experienced person onBarra in such matters, one who had one foot in the old religion and one foot in the new. It just so happened that they both knew her.
